Thermae Romae, Vol. 1

By Mari Yamazaki
(Hardcover Book, 2012)

When Roman architect Lucius is criticized for his "outdated" thermae designs, he retreats to the local bath to collect his thoughts. All Lucius wants is to recapture the Rome of earlier days, when one could enjoy a relaxing bath without the pressure of merchants and roughhousing patrons. Slipping deeper into the warm water, Lucius is suddenly caught in the suction and dragged through the drainage at the bottom of the bath! He emerges coughing and sputtering amid a group of strange-looking foreigners with the most peculiar bathhouse customs...over 1,500 years in the future in modern-day Japan! His contemporaries wanted him to modernize, and so, borrowing the customs of these mysterious bath-loving people, Lucius opens what quickly becomes the most popular new bathhouse in Rome-Thermae Romae!

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When Roman architect Lucius is criticized for his "outdated" thermae designs, he retreats to the local bath to collect his thoughts. All Lucius wants is to recapture the Rome of earlier days, when one could enjoy a relaxing bath without the pressure of merchants and roughhousing patrons. Slipping deeper into the warm water, Lucius is suddenly caught in the suction and dragged through the drainage at the bottom of the bath! He emerges coughing and sputtering amid a group of strange-looking foreigners with the most peculiar bathhouse customs...over 1,500 years in the future in modern-day Japan! His contemporaries wanted him to modernize, and so, borrowing the customs of these mysterious bath-loving people, Lucius opens what quickly becomes the most popular new bathhouse in Rome-Thermae Romae!

Mari Yamazaki was born in Tokyo on April 20, 1967. At age seventeen, she moved to Italy, where she started studying drawing at an art school in Florence. Yamazaki made her manga debut in 1996 with an autobiographical look at her life in Italy. After bouncing around between Japan, the Middle East, and Italy, she finally settled down in Lisbon, Portugal, in 2003. In 2008, she began drawing Thermae Romae for the monthly magazine Comic Beam on an irregular basis, and the first collected volume was a smash hit upon its 2009 release. In 2010, Thermae Romae received the Manga Taisho Award 2010 and the 14th Osamu Tezuka Cultural Prize, Short Story Award.Mari Yamazaki currently lives in Chicago with her Italian husband and their son.